María Corina Machado, a Venezuelan opposition chief pushed into hiding since a disputed election final 12 months, has been awarded the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize for keeping “the flame of democracy burning amid a growing darkness.”
Machado obtained the accolade for tirelessly selling democratic rights in Venezuela and “for her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy,” the Norwegian Nobel Committee mentioned Friday, asserting the award at a ceremony in Oslo.
Born in Caracas, Venezuela’s capital, in 1967, Machado skilled as an industrial engineer earlier than coming into politics. In 2002, she based Súmate, a volunteer group that promotes political rights and screens elections.
Machado has described her life’s work as selling “ballots over bullets.” The Nobel committee lauded her as “one of the most extraordinary examples of civilian courage in Latin America in recent times.”
“Oh my god … I have no words,” Machado mentioned after being woken within the center of the night time by a telephone name from the committee to inform her she had gained the prize.
Although the White House criticized the committee for overlooking the peacemaking efforts of Donald Trump – who has lengthy publicly coveted the prize – the US president praised Machado in January for “peacefully expressing the voices and the WILL of the Venezuelan people.”
In an announcement, Machado devoted her award to the “suffering people of Venezuela” and to Trump “for his decisive support of our cause.” She mentioned her award ought to be act as an “impetus” to all Venezuelans “to complete our task: achieving freedom.”
“We are on the threshold of victory, and today more than ever we count on President Trump, the people of the United States, the people of Latin America, and the democratic nations of the world as our main allies in achieving freedom and democracy. Venezuela will be free!” she mentioned.
Tensions between the US and Venezuela have escalated in current weeks. NCS has previously reported that Trump is conducting a broad technique geared toward weakening Maduro, in accordance to sources briefed on the administration’s plans.
Machado’s work has turn out to be harder over time. Freedom House, a monitoring group, says Venezuela’s democratic establishments have deteriorated since 1999 and “have grown sharply worse in recent years” due to a harsh crackdown by the federal government of President Nicolás Maduro.
Machado tried to run towards Maduro within the 2024 presidential election, however her candidacy was voided by the regime. She then switched her help to the social gathering of Edmundo González Urrutia, and labored to mobilize residents and practice election observers to attempt to make sure the vote was free and honest.
Both Maduro and González claimed victory after the vote. When Venezuela’s government-aligned electoral authorities declared Maduro the winner, with 51.95% of the vote, opposition forces cried foul. Analysts reported “suspicious” knowledge patterns within the reported outcomes. One expert mentioned there was a couple of “one in 100 million chance that this particular pattern will occur by chance.”
After the election, Machado claimed she might show that Maduro had misplaced “in a landslide to Edmundo, 67% to 30%.” Writing within the Wall Street Journal, she mentioned her group had “receipts obtained directly from more than 80% of the nation’s polling stations.”
The Nobel committee praised Machado on Friday for ensuring “the final tallies were documented before the regime could destroy the ballots and lie about the outcome.” At the time, the Biden administration additionally concurred that there was “overwhelming evidence” that Maduro misplaced the vote.
After declaring victory, the Maduro authorities moved to crack down on dissent. Human Rights Watch, a monitoring group, mentioned this 12 months that the federal government has “killed, tortured, detained, and forcefully disappeared people seeking democratic change.”
As a outcome, Machado has lived in hiding in Venezuela since final 12 months, resurfacing briefly throughout protests in January. Speaking to NCS from an unknown location in August 2024, Machado mentioned the regime had “lost total touch with reality and lost its social base,” permitting her motion – with no assets, and working below strict censorship – to mobilize “millions of Venezuelans” dedicated to democracy.
“Everyone in Venezuela is afraid of losing our freedom or even our lives,” she advised NCS’s Christiane Amanpour. “But above all we are committed to make the truth prevail… and get a transition to democracy peacefully.”
Maduro’s ‘regime is at its weakest place ever,’ says Venezuelan opposition chief
The Nobel Peace Prize is awarded every year to the person or group which has achieved essentially the most to fulfill the phrases set out within the will of Alfred Nobel, the Swedish chemist whose fortune established the Nobel Prizes.
The will says the award might be given to “the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations and the abolition or reduction of standing armies and the formation and spreading of peace congresses.”
Jørgen Watne Frydnes, chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, mentioned Machado had happy the complete standards.
“She has brought her country’s opposition together. She has never wavered in resisting the militarization of Venezuelan society. She has been steadfast in her support for a peaceful transition to democracy,” he mentioned Friday.
In choosing Machado as this 12 months’s laureate, the committee signaled its considerations concerning the well being of democracy worldwide, in accordance to Karim Haggag, director of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).
“The Nobel Committee clearly chose to highlight democracy as a priority area, underscoring that this award comes at a time of global backsliding of democratic values and norms,” Haggag advised NCS.
Nina Græger, director of the Peace Research Institute Oslo, mentioned Machado’s award is “above all, a prize for democracy.”
“Research shows that democracy is an important precondition for peace. At a moment when authoritarianism is on the rise across the world, this award highlights the courage of those who defend freedom with ballots, not bullets,” she advised NCS.
Analysts say the committee typically makes use of the prize to ship a message about areas of concern over the previous 12 months. The 2024 prize went to Nihon Hidankyo, a grassroots Japanese group of atomic bomb survivors, at a time when the world was as soon as once more confronting the specter of nuclear weapons, amid Russia’s threats throughout its warfare in Ukraine.
Friday’s award got here after a months-long marketing campaign of self-promotion by US President Donald Trump, who pressured repeatedly that he believed he deserved the prize for ending “unsolvable” wars throughout his second time period.
Although Trump scored a significant diplomatic victory this week in asserting the primary section of a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, this probably got here too late to affect the Nobel commitee. Nominations for this 12 months’s prize closed on January 31, when Trump had solely been in workplace for 11 days.
The White House nonetheless criticized the committee for snubbing Trump.
“President Trump will continue making peace deals, ending wars, and saving lives,” mentioned communications director Steven Cheung. “The Nobel Committee proved they place politics over peace.”
The prize additionally comes at a time of rising antagonism between the United States and Venezuela, with the US navy finishing up deadly strikes on boats off the coast of Venezuela, which the Trump administration has deemed to be “narco-trafficking” vessels.
The US has additionally deployed at the very least seven warships to the southern Caribbean and introduced a $50 million reward for info main to Maduro’s arrest. The Venezuelan president who has confronted formal drug trafficking prices from the Justice Department since 2020.
The peace prize carries a money award of 11 million Swedish kronor ($1 million) and might be formally introduced at a ceremony in Oslo in December.
Frydnes, the chair of the committee, couldn’t verify whether or not Machado might be ready to attend.
“It’s a question of security. It’s too early to say. We always hope to have the laureate with us in Oslo, but this is a serious security situation which needs to be handled first,” Frydnes mentioned.